I have finally realized that the lessons Dr. Refaat taught me and the power of his words keep him alive. As long as I breathe, I will tell his stories and the endless stories of my occupied and silenced city.
Ramadan has arrived, and northern Gaza has been overtaken by famine. “People fast without the promise of breaking it, and the world watches on without doing anything,” Ghazi Oweis, a refugee from northern Gaza, tells Mondoweiss.
Israeli forces bombed Gaza on the first day of Ramadan, killing two fishermen. Israel’s fortified highway has reached the Mediterranean coast, effectively splitting Gaza in two. Meanwhile, hundreds of settlers stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
UN Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri says Israel’s intentional starvation of Gaza is unprecedented. “We’ve never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so completely and so quickly,” he tells Mondoweiss. “Never in modern history.”
At least eighteen children have died in Gaza from malnutrition, while deaths by starvation have risen to 23. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that Biden’s proposed floating pier would take two months and 1000 U.S. troops to build.
As Israel’s impending ground invasion of Rafah looms without a ceasefire agreement in sight, the 1.5 million people crammed into Gaza’s southernmost city fear that they will spend Ramadan under Israeli fire.
The “flour massacre” marked a new phase in Israel’s starving of northern Gaza when the army opened fire on crowds waiting for aid trucks. “Our lives must have become so cheap for so many people to die this way,” a witness told Mondoweiss.
The Democratic Party has patched over the contradiction in its coalition between antiwar progressives and Zionists for 60 years. The Gaza genocide is finally causing a crisis.
Israel is threatening to carry out a full-scale invasion of Rafah, a tiny section of Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians are now packed, on March 10. Ahead of the deadline, a global day of protest will happen this weekend.
What Aaron Bushnell did was an act of fierce, principled love in a situation of extreme desperation. It unflinchingly declared that even in the heart of the empire the lies of Zionism no longer hold.